Thank you, Madam Mendès.
Mr. McCauley and Mr. Blaikie, there's been much discussion and no shortage of confusion over the government's efforts to align the estimates with the budget and over the use of TB vote 40, the budget implementation vote, to help achieve that.
I do take the point that the items in budget 2018 and represented in TB vote 40, the budget implementation act, are not included in departmental plans. That's a truism.
In the same vein, in years past where we've had the main estimates, then the budget, and then a series of supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C), Parliament has voted in supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C) for new spending and, in some cases, new programs that were not foreseen in the main estimates and were not part of the departmental plan that was tabled by the department on or before March 31.
If the question is “how do we know what we're voting on because it's not in the departmental plan?”, I would simple point out that this has always been a weakness of our system. It's a weakness that—